Janelle Tam, an Ontario teenager who recently moved from Singapore to Canada, won a national science award for her groundbreaking work on the anti-aging properties of tree pulp. Tam, 16, won the $5,000 award in the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada for showing that cellulose, the woody material found in trees that enables them to stand, also acts as a potent anti-oxidant. ‘Her super anti-oxidant compound could one day help improve health and anti-aging products by neutralizing more of the harmful free-radicals found in the body,’ Bioscience Education Canada said in a statement. Tam’s work involved tiny particles in the tree pulp known as nano-crystalline cellulose, which is flexible, durable and also stronger than steel. Photo: Courtesy of the National Research Council of Canada.